Showing posts with label social contagion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social contagion. Show all posts

Friday, December 20, 2024

Inside the World of the LSD User


The spread of misinformation varies by topic and by country in Europe, study finds
May 2024, phys.org

Researchers analyzed news activity on Twitter (now X) in France, Germany, Italy and the UK from 2019 to 2021, including a focus on news about Brexit, the coronavirus, and the COVID vaccines. Each news source they analyzed was rated as either "reliable" or "questionable" based upon their NewsGuard score.
  • Across all four countries, the vast majority of users only ever consumed reliable news sources on each of the three topics.
  • But in every country and in each topic, there was always a small percentage of users who only ever consumed questionable news sources - with very few people consuming a mix of both reliable and questionable sources.
  • Germany had the highest ratio of questionable news retweets to reliable news retweets on all three topics, with France in second, followed by Italy, and the UK had the lowest proportion of questionable news retweets overall.
  • Italy had the lowest proportion of questionable news retweets for the topic of the coronavirus - but had the highest percentage of people consuming only questionable news sources on Brexit.

"Cultural nuances" will be important when it comes to fighting misinformation.

via Ca' Foscari University of Venice: News and misinformation consumption: A temporal comparison across European countries, PLoS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0302473

Image credit: 3D printed vacuum system traps dark matter - University of Nottingham - Jun 2024


Study finds avoiding social media before an election has little to no effect on people's political views
May 2024, phys.org

35,000 Facebook and Instagram users who were paid to stay off the platforms in the run-up to Election Day.

I'm thinking about the overall social influence, like if you're not online but your friends are, it's all the same. So if they did this study by taking only the friends of the people chosen, then we would see an effect? (Friendship Paradox)

via Stanford: Gentzkow, Matthew, The effects of Facebook and Instagram on the 2020 election: A deactivation experiment, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2321584121.


Mental disorders may spread in young people's social networks
May 2024, phys.org

Contagion - 700,000 ninth-grade pupils born between 1985 and 1997 from 860 Finnish schools followed for 11 years (largest and most comprehensive so far on the spread of mental disorders in social networks).

The number of classmates diagnosed with a mental disorder was associated with a higher risk of receiving a mental disorder diagnosis later in life.

The connection observed in the study is not necessarily causal. "It may be possible, for instance, that the threshold for seeking help for mental health issues is lowered when there are one or more people in your social network who have already sought help for their problems" (beneficial contagion).

via University of Helsinki: Jussi Alho et al, Transmission of Mental Disorders in Adolescent Peer Networks, JAMA Psychiatry (2024). DOI: 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.1126

Dual-species Rydberg array combining rubidium and cesium atoms to enhance quantum computing - BernienLab at University of Chicago - Oct 2024 [link]

Study suggests less conformity leads to more innovation
May 2024, phys.org

These methods reveal something crazy - how easy it could be to manipulate a big part of a population just by doing some very small adjustments to the recommendation algorithms, and the idea of synthetic networks cycling through the real networks as a kind of social regulator.

  • The Matthew effect aka "rich-get-richer effect" increases centralization in the network, which destroys the niches protecting minority opinions, reducing sociodiversity.
  • "Networks that promote sociodiversity have structural features that protect minority opinions"
  • "Unfollowing a few VIPs can help to promote sociodiversity"

via Complexity Science Hub and ETH Zurich: Andrea Musso et al, How networks shape diversity for better or worse, Royal Society Open Science (2024). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.230505


Misleading COVID-19 headlines from mainstream sources did more harm on Facebook than fake news
May 2024, phys.org

They showed thousands of survey participants the headlines from 130 vaccine-related stories - including both mainstream content and known misinformation - and tested how those headlines impacted their intentions to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Researchers also asked a separate group of respondents to rate the headlines across various attributes, including plausibility and political leaning. They matched that against 13,206 vaccine-related URLs and the number of users who viewed each.
  • Misleading content from mainstream news sources - rather than outright misinformation or "fake news" - was the primary driver of vaccine hesitancy on Facebook.
  • "Vaccine-skeptical" content was potentially misleading but not flagged as misinformation by Facebook fact-checkers.
  • One factor reliably predicted impacts on vaccination intentions: the extent to which a headline suggested that the vaccine was harmful to a person's health.
  • The most-viewed was an article was from a well-regarded mainstream news source, and its clickbait" headline was highly suggestive and implied that the vaccine was likely responsible.
  • (That's significant since the vast majority of viewers on social media likely never click out to read past the headline.)
  • Contrary to popular perceptions, the researchers estimated that vaccine-skeptical content reduced vaccination intentions 46 times more than misinformation flagged by fact-checkers.
  • Even though flagged misinformation was more harmful when seen, it had relatively low reach.
  • Gray-area content is less harmful per exposure but is seen far more often, thus it's more impactful overall.
(Also, what does this mean about actual advertising metrics?)

via MIT Sloan School of Management: Jennifer Allen, Quantifying the impact of misinformation and vaccine-skeptical content on Facebook, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adk3451.


Advertisers may be inadvertently funding misinformation
Jun 2024, phys.org

(I think we're starting to see a pattern here.)

5,000 websites (1,250 were misinformation websites); 42,000 unique advertisers; nine million instances of advertising companies appearing on news websites from 2019 to 2021. 

The companies advertising on misinformation websites accounted for anywhere from 46% to 82% of overall companies in their respective industries.

Companies that used digital advertisement platforms were 10 times more likely to appear on misinformation websites than those that did not.

Authors propose two low-cost, scalable interventions: 
  • Improve transparency for advertisers about where their ads appear 
  • Make it easier for consumers to identify which companies advertise on misinformation outlets through information disclosures and company rankings

via Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and Stanford: Wajeeha Ahmad et al, Companies inadvertently fund online misinformation despite consumer backlash, Nature (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07404-1

Entangling pairs of photons using 1.2 micrometer niobium oxide dichloride - Leevi Kallioniemi at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore - Oct 2024 [link]

Study suggests ambivalence and polarized views can promote political violence
Jun 2024, phys.org

Time to get confused! 

Previous research has shown that ambivalence about a political issue typically leads people to avoid taking moderate actions such as voting or donating money in support of that issue.

And that's why these findings for extreme behaviors surprised the researchers.

Here, researchers found that ambivalence can actually lead some people - especially those with polarized views - to be more supportive of extreme actions.

The reason? Ambivalence creates discomfort in those with extreme views by making them feel weak or insecure about their beliefs - and that can lead them to compensate.

"When people have these polarized views on a political topic, but also feel some conflict about that belief - that is really a potent combination."

"Those who are conflicted are more willing to give their money to extreme organizations."

"Those who have extreme views, but still feel conflicted about them, feel a need to prove themselves, to show that their beliefs are real and strong."

via Ohio State University: Joseph Siev, Ambivalent attitudes promote support for extreme political actions, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adn2965.

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Monday, October 7, 2024

The Friend Network


Targeting friends to induce social contagion can benefit the world, says new research
May 2024, phys.org

The study evaluated a strategy that exploits the so-called "friendship paradox" of human social networks. That theory suggests that on average, your friends have more friends than you do. As the theory goes, the individuals nominated as friends potentially wield more social influence than those who identify them.

For the study, the researchers utilized the friendship paradox in the delivery of a proven 22-month education package promoting maternal, child, and neonatal health in 176 isolated villages in Honduras.

The researchers found that delivering the intervention to a smaller fraction of households in each village via the friendship targeting strategy led to the same level of behavioral adoption as would have been achieved by treating all the households.

People were either selected randomly within each village to receive the intervention or they were randomly chosen to nominate their friends, who were subsequently picked at random. 

"We found that targeting people's friends for an intervention induced significant social contagion, creating cascades of beneficial health practices to people who didn't receive the intervention." 

For many outcomes, using the friendship-nomination targeting method to reach 20% of households in a village affected outcomes the same as administering the intervention to every household.

Yes, Facebook knows this very well.

via Yale and Temple University: Edoardo M. Airoldi et al, Induction of social contagion for diverse outcomes in structured experiments in isolated villages, Science (2024). DOI: 10.1126/science.adi5147



Study shows relatively low number of superspreaders responsible for large portion of misinformation on Twitter
May 2024, phys.org

10 months of data; 2,397,388 tweets; 448,103 users; parsed by low-credibility information status.

A third of the low-credibility tweets had been posted by people using just 10 accounts, and just 1,000 accounts were responsible for posting approximately 70% of such tweets.

via Indiana University: Matthew R. DeVerna et al, Identifying and characterizing superspreaders of low-credibility content on Twitter, PLOS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0302201

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Wednesday, August 21, 2024

Social Control as Social Service and the Art of Meme Hygiene


Study shows babies learn to imitate others because they themselves are imitated by caregivers
Sep 2023, phys.org

(The whole article is basically a good description of recursion.)

  • Social learning avoids laborious trial and error; the wheel does not have to be reinvented each time.
  • "Children acquire their ability to imitate because they themselves are imitated by their caregivers" 
  • Parents respond to the signals given by the child and reflect and amplify them. A mutual imitation of actions and gestures develops. 
  • "These experiences create connections between what the child feels and does on the one hand and what it sees on the other"
  • "Imitation is the start of the cultural process toward becoming human" 
  • Over the course of generations and millennia, this interplay has led to the cultural evolution of humans"

via Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich:  Samuel Essler et al, The cultural basis of cultural evolution: Longitudinal evidence that infant imitation develops by being imitated, Current Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.08.084. 

Image credit: Speaking of memetics, imitation, and learning, the image above is an example of a computer trying to be a human - a graphic designer specifically. We can see how, in very subtle ways, computers can't be people, not just yet: AI Art - Ad Poop - 2024


Social bonding gets people on the same wavelength, neural synchronization study suggests
Mar 2024, phys.org

176 three-person groups of human participants wore caps with fNIRS (functional near-infrared spectroscopy) electrodes while they communicated with strangers in a face-to-face triangle. (But it sounds like they communicated via text message, although they were sitting across from each other.)

This writeup is so concise I have to copy the whole thing:

Each group democratically selected a leader, so each group of three ultimately included one leader and two followers. After strategizing together, groups played two economic games designed to test their willingness to make sacrifices to benefit their group (or harm other groups).

Experimenters assigned some triads to go through a bonding session, where they were grouped according to color preferences, given uniforms, and led through an introductory chat session to build familiarity.

Bonded groups spoke more freely and bounced between speakers more frequently and rapidly, relative to groups that didn't experience this bonding session. This bonding effect was stronger between leaders and followers than between two followers.

Neural activity in two brain regions linked to social interaction, the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (rDLPFC) and the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ), aligned between leaders and followers if they had bonded.

The authors state that this neural synchronization suggests that leaders may be anticipating followers' mental states during group decision-making, though they acknowledge that their findings are restricted to East Asian Chinese individuals communicating via text (without non-verbal cues), whose culture emphasizes group cohesion and commitment towards group leaders.

via Beijing Normal University: Ni J, Yang J, Ma Y (2024) Social bonding in groups of humans selectively increases inter-status information exchange and prefrontal neural synchronization. PLoS Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.3002545

Charting brain synchronization patterns during social interactions - Yuto Kurihara from Waseda University - Apr 2024

Charting brain synchronization patterns during social interactions
Apr 2024, phys.org

See the infographic above, really well done.

"Our findings challenge the conventional understanding"

Cooperative interactive tasks between individuals with weak social ties result in more synchronized brain activity compared to individuals with strong ties. 

The participants were given a joint tapping task where they had to tap a mouse button in opposite rhythms. They wore earphones and had to anticipate their partner's movements.

Researchers suggest that the lack of familiarity between strangers requires a more involved process for predicting each other's actions or behaviors in a cooperative task. Consequently, this heightened engagement leads to a more efficient transfer of information between closely connected nodes within the neural network.

via Waseda University: Yuto Kurihara et al, The topology of interpersonal neural network in weak social ties, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55495-7


Understanding the spread of behavior: How long-tie connections accelerate the speed of social contagion
Apr 2024, phys.org

This is all getting pretty scary; I used to think this was something far off, but it sure seems we have both the knowledge and the means to do these things, and I wonder how it's being done already, and highly doubt it's not being done already. Too irresistible. 

Initially, researchers thought highly clustered ties that are close together in networks created the perfect environment for the spread of complex behaviors that require significant social reinforcement. However, long ties, which are created through randomly rewired edges that make them "longer," accelerate the spread of social contagions. 

(So this is not about weak vs strong ties, but short vs long.)

Having a small probability of adoption below the contagion threshold is enough to ensure that random rewiring accelerates the spread of these contagions.

"Further work could study such strategies for seeding complex behaviors"

This research suggests those wanting to achieve fast, total spread would benefit from implementing intervention points across network neighborhoods with long-tie connections to other network regions

via University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, Sloan School of Management at MIT: Dean Eckles et al, Long ties accelerate noisy threshold-based contagions, Nature Human Behaviour (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41562-024-01865-0

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Thursday, December 21, 2023

When Algorithms Attack - Thought Hygiene and Social Behavior in the Digital Age


Here's some things about how algorithms and social behavior interact, starting with a good background on how we as individuals treat bad information:

No simple answer for why people believe in conspiracy theories
Jun 2023, phys.org
"Conspiracy theorists are not all likely to be simple-minded, mentally unwell folks—a portrait which is routinely painted in popular culture," said Bowes. "Instead, many turn to conspiracy theories to fulfill deprived motivational needs and make sense of distress and impairment."
  • 170 studies, 158,000 participants from the United States, UK and Poland, measuring motivations or personality traits associated with conspiratorial thinking.
  • overall, people were motivated to believe in conspiracy theories by a need to understand and feel safe in their environment and a need to feel like the community they identify with is superior to others
  • people were more likely to believe specific conspiracy theories when they were motivated by social relationships
  • participants who perceived social threats were more likely to believe in events-based conspiracy theories (Sept. 11), rather than an abstract theory in general (governments plan to harm their citizens to retain power)
  • people who are motivated by a desire to feel unique are more likely to believe in general conspiracy theories about how the world works
  • The Big Five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism) had a much weaker relationship with conspiratorial thinking
  • may be related to recent theory about social identity motives and conspiracy theories 
via Emory University: The Conspiratorial Mind: A Meta-Analytic Review of Motivational and Personological Correlates, Psychological Bulletin (2023). DOI: 10.1037/bul0000392

Image credit: AI Art - Is Your Data Under the Weather - 2023


Perception of Russia-Ukraine conflict linked to endorsement of false news about adversary
Mar 2023, phys.org
Analysis of the survey responses showed that participants who perceived a higher level of conflict between Ukraine and Russia were less likely to believe in and want to share the false stories about the European Union, but were more likely to endorse the false stories about Russia. Stories about Tanzania (a neutral control) were least likely to be endorsed.

These findings suggest that people's tendency to endorse false news does not depend simply on their group identity; it also depends on perceptions of the level of conflict between their group and another group. This implies that conflict de-escalation could help prevent the spread of misinformation.
via Leiden University in the Netherlands and Public Library of Science: Information battleground: Conflict perceptions motivate the belief in and sharing of misinformation about the adversary, PLoS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0282308


Social media 'trust' or 'distrust' buttons could reduce spread of misinformation
Jun 2023, phys.org

(You mean like a "dislike" button?)
The addition of "trust" and "distrust" buttons on social media, alongside standard "like" buttons, could help to reduce the spread of misinformation, finds a new experimental study led by University College London (UCL) researchers.
via UUCL Psychology & Language Sciences, Max Planck UCL Center for Computational Psychiatry and Aging Research, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology: Laura K Globig et al, Changing the incentive structure of social media platforms to halt the spread of misinformation, eLife (2023). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.85767

Also: Valentina Vellani et al, The illusory truth effect leads to the spread of misinformation, Cognition (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105421


Controversy in Facebook posts linked to speed of spread among users
Jun 2023, phys.org

  • 57 million posts published across about 2 million Facebook pages and groups from 2018 to 2022. 
  • Posts that went viral were more likely to be associated with negative or controversial reactions among users, regardless of topic.
  • Posts that did not go viral were associated with more positive reactions.
via Sapienza Università di Roma: Etta G, Sangiorgio E, Di Marco N, Avalle M, Scala A, Cinelli M, et al. Characterizing engagement dynamics across topics on Facebook, PLoS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0286150

Image credit: AI Art - Isometric Maze by Jesper Ejsing, Rhads, Makoto Shinkai Lois van Baarle, and Ilya Kuvshinov - 2022

Researchers build an AI system to identify social norm violations
Jul 2023, phys.org
Built the system using GPT-3, zero-shot text classification, and automatic rule discovery. The system used a binary of ten social emotions: competence, politeness, trust, discipline, caring, agreeableness, success, conformity, decency, and loyalty.

DARPA commissioned The Computational Cultural Understanding (CCU) program to create cross-cultural language understanding technologies to improve a Department of Defense operator's situational awareness and interactional effectiveness. Cross-cultural miscommunication not only derails negotiations, but also can be a contributing factor leading to war, according to DARPA's explanation of the rationale for the program.
via Department of Cognitive and Brain Sciences Ben-Gurion University of the Negev: Yair Neuman et al, AI for identifying social norm violation, Scientific Reports (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-35350-x


Sharing on Facebook reveals two very different news environments
Aug 2023, phys.org

Low-Cred
Here it is: "There's a little more nuance to what it takes to be a well-informed person. You can't just be reading multiple news stories. You have to be reading sources that are well known to be credible."
(I think we're having a problem with the "well-known" part; well-known by who? It gets even harder  when more and more of our online infodiets come from robots.)
  • 2 million online news stories that were shared at least 100 times by Facebook users from February 2017 to April 2019
  • both high- and low-credibility publishers tended to put out bursts of coverage at the same time -- but they often were about different topics
  • low-credibility publishers more often converged on stories about politics and the government
  • high-credibility publishers' topics ranged more widely
via Ohio State: Ceren Budak et al, Bursts of contemporaneous publication among high- and low-credibility online information providers, New Media & Society (2023). DOI: 10.1177/14614448231183617


Social media algorithms exploit how humans learn from their peers
Aug 2023, phys.org

They can't change to create a sense of community because that's not their purpose and doesn't yield profit.
Humans are biased to learn from others in a way that typically promotes cooperation and collective problem-solving, which is why they tend to learn more from individuals they perceive as a part of their ingroup and those they perceive to be prestigious. In addition, when learning biases were first evolving, morally and emotionally charged information was important to prioritize, as this information would be more likely to be relevant to enforcing group norms and ensuring collective survival.

In contrast, algorithms are usually selecting information that boosts user engagement in order to increase advertising revenue. This means algorithms amplify the very information humans are biased to learn from, and they can oversaturate social media feeds with what the researchers call Prestigious, Ingroup, Moral, and Emotional (PRIME) information, regardless of the content's accuracy or representativeness of a group's opinions.
This last part is great part because it sounds like how you have to talk about an alien race taking over the planet or a new parasite to wipe out the population -- 
"It's not that the algorithm is designed to disrupt cooperation. It's just that its goals are different."
via Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern: Algorithm-mediated social learning in online social networks, Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.tics.2023.06.008


No evidence linking Facebook adoption and negative well-being
Aug 2023, phys.org

According to the article below this, it doesn't matter because it's already broken, but also because nobody is going to believe this.
"largest independent scientific study ever conducted" (nearly a million people across 72 countries over 2008 to 2019)
Reasons -- "Much of the past research into social media use and well-being has been hampered by an exclusive focus on well-being data in the Global North and a reliance on inaccurate self-reports of social media engagement."
There was another study that says the positive effects are mediated by affluence, so that the wealthier the country the more negative the effects and vice versa? I don't see it here, but I think it just came out in the last few months. Also, and this isn't so much a swipe at the authors, but the state of affairs in general, that their first reference, where they introduce their "2.94 billion monthly active users" number, is sourced from quarterly earnings data from the company itself. We know private companies blackbox lots of their data, and that we can't use with confidence the numbers they give us (the public, or university researchers), and yet one of the base numbers of their whole calculation comes from the company, lowering the confidence of all that follows. 

via University of Oxford's Internet Institute: Matti Vuorre et al, Estimating the association between Facebook adoption and well-being in 72 countries, Royal Society Open Science (2023). DOI: 10.1098/rsos.221451


Facebook's design makes it unable to control misinformation, research suggests
Sep 2023, phys.org
Facebook's efforts were undermined by the core design features of the platform itself. "Our results show that removing content or changing algorithms can be ineffective if it doesn't change what the platform is designed to do."
via George Washington and Johns Hopkins Universities: David Broniatowski, The Efficacy of Facebook's Vaccine Misinformation Policies and Architecture During The COVID-19 Pandemic, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adh2132



And finally, feed this to your model-bot:

High rate of mental health problems and political extremism found in those who bought firearms during COVID pandemic
Sep 2023, phys.org

Not about the article itself, but this is the statement that defines you as a conspiracy theorist in scientific studies:

"The government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation." (I agree, I do not agree)

via University of Michigan: Brian M. Hicks et al, Who bought a gun during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States?: Associations with QAnon beliefs, right-wing political attitudes, intimate partner violence, antisocial behavior, suicidality, and mental health and substance use problems, PLOS ONE (2023). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290770

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Thursday, January 28, 2021

Attack of the Memes


AKA Digitally Mediated Social Contagion


It turns out 2021 really is the year of the meme. First the Washington, then Wall Street.

Memetics has been a perennial topic on Network Address, almost from the beginning. In fact, you might say the only two things you're likely to find on here are about memetics and fakes. 

Now that the mainstream pop culture bots have taken the wheel on this one, it's time to turn our attention further outwards. What will it be next, who knows. But if Vernor Vinge's Rainbows End is any manual for the future (as it sure as hell has been so far), then we should start seriously thinking about physics engines and artificially intelligent entities. 

Looking forward to an interesting decade ahead.
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Thursday, July 5, 2018

We Repeat - Do Not Believe




First you thought America was the only place where social media really f***ed things up, but then you realize the same things happened to Britain. And then, one day, sometime between hearing that Oprah will run for president and that people in your neighborhood are making thousands of dollars a day by doing this one simple thing from their own home, you realize that the same technology that has wreaked absolute havoc on your world, has done things you can't even imagine to others.

So we are comparing here America and India. Two very different countries, two very different cultures, one super duper hysteria machine.

India WhatsApp 'child kidnap' rumours claim two more victims
Jun 2018, BBC

Rumours of child kidnappings are spreading across India over WhatsApp, and have already led to the deaths of seven other people in the past month.

Officials elsewhere in India have urged people not to believe messages linked to child abductions.

Post Script

A little reminder of where we are in this battle for your mind:

Cambridge scientists consider fake news 'vaccine'
Jan 2017, BBC

Researchers suggest "pre-emptively exposing" readers to a small "dose" of the misinformation can help organisations cancel out bogus claims. ...like a virus...contagion...

Not to mention, Jaron Larnier reminding us that social media is addictive on purpose, and that the Big Data Brothers are a mass-population behavior-modification machine:

Jaron Lanier: How Can We Repair The Mistakes Of The Digital Era?
May 2018, NPR's TED Radio Hour

 Post Post Script

Clickbait: The changing face of online journalism
Sep 2015, BBC News

Opponents [of a 'pay writers for clicks' business model] argue it means journalists will dumb down stories in order to get more clicks in order to earn a living. 
There are fears it could curtail a cornerstone of journalism - holding those in office and power to account - in favour of appealing to the lowest common denominator.


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Thursday, June 8, 2017

Catch Em All



There's a lot about fake news and viral memes lately. That is exciting over here, because it's been a central theme at Network Address forever.

But wait...as I search the interwebs for a good image to go with this post, I am hit with an opportune eureka moment.

Viruses, memetic infection, etc., I'm looking for a picture of a kid getting vaccinated, or just jabbed with a needle. I knew I would have to contend with tempting distractions from both pro- and anti- vaccination data-bowels (just came up w that one, aka shit-spewing websites). And so, just one, I click on this chart which lists the characteristics of folks who do not vaccinate their kids. And, despite what you would think (unless everyone already knows this), those people tend to be wealthy and educated. I only point this out because it seems counter-intuitive that educated people would do something kinda stupid, like neglect the benefits of lifesaving medical treatment in lieu of the statistically benign chance of getting a totally pathologically-unknown condition of autism.

Anyway, the point is that the whole vaccines-thing is a meme, for sure, and memes are powerful, and they can even kill you. (Dan Dennett so eloquently points out in his talk about Dangerous Memes.) This meme has been spreading among a particular segment of the population. What is it that makes one person susceptible to one meme? How did this thing become a thing? Turns out there are some things happening like this. I want to know about how anti-vaccines became a thing, but in the meantime, we have this --

Apr 2017, phys.org

The results don't sound as interesting as the title, but I guess we should be happy nonetheless that these experiments are being done in a lab setting, instead of just observing any available social media data...

***
And here we have a good look at the effects of a viral campaign, what makes them work or not work; they're looking at the ALS ice bucket challenge, you remember that I'm sure --

Viral charity campaigns have a psychological 'recipe' and all-too-brief lifespan
Feb 2017, phys.org

This is just a clip, there's a better explanation in the article:
"Just as a flame that burns twice as bright burns half as long, so a rapid social consensus spike reaches an equally rapid saturation point.

"Once the social tipping point of a campaign has passed, momentum can decay quickly and the purpose can get diluted. Once the ALS campaign had reached peak virality, many people were just pouring cold water over their heads without necessarily referencing the charity."
-Dr Sander van der Linden, from Cambridge's Department of Psychology

image source: link

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